Even in a deep-blue city in a deep-blue state, politics is deeply factional along lines of race, class, and culture. My latest with @aldotoledo and @HarshaReports on S.F.'s voting blocs, and how they will shape tomorrow's mayor's race. https://t.co/XGhNvWGQjq

Full story here:

Part of the story is that S.F.'s laws still don't make most projects pencil out for developers. But part of it is some (quite restrictive) owner occupancy requirements.

"Plex" style homes are getting permitted even in some non-Bay cities at much higher rates. So what gives in the Bay?

Do "blue cities" fail to build housing uniformly? Per this fascinating feature by @xianleonard: no. Portland is building lots of "missing middle" housing even as S.F. keeps trying and failing. Why? 🧵

Full piece here:

This doesn't look like a one-time fluke. Voter registration shifts have been advantaging Republicans, and have actually picked up steam since the Trump admin has gotten going. Data from political data firms (L2, PDI) shows Hispanic voters at all income levels making this move.

NEW: Why this California city swung toward Trump more than any other By @sara_dinatale @ashukla89 @HarshaReports and @santiagomejia

The result was a perfect anti-Dem storm: 1. Low-engagement young voters came out for the GOP 2. Habitual Dem voters stayed home 3. An organized minority group changed sides Together, these trends are very dangerous for Dems statewide. We'll have more on this soon.

The city's well-organized Sikh community seems to have swung sharply to Trump. In fact, while all major precincts in the town had at least a 20% swing right, the more heavily Punjabi ones had even bigger swings...

Livingston is 70% Hispanic and 20% Asian, mostly Punjabi Sikh. Like in many other Hispanic places statewide, reliable Dem voters seem to have stayed home, and new younger voters seem to have trended red. But that's not all that happened...

We sent @sara_dinatale to the CA city that swung most to Trump (by 36 pp!): Livingston, in Merced Co. What we found there was a microcosm of changes that are sweeping across working-class Latino and Asian communities statewide. 🧵

Full piece here:

So the maps are rather less "fair." But will they work? Probably, even in an environment where the whole state gets a bit redder. BUT, these maps assume that certain heavy-D districts, particularly in Hispanic areas, won't keep zooming right.

Compactness isn't everything. Look at CA-2, which adds Redding and NE CA and becomes more "compact" in the process. But the new district is clearly less coherent -- it mixes conservative ranchers with lefty coastal types. Current CA-2 is more of a "community"

That reduces "proportionality" in the maps. The overall partisanship of the districts reflects the partisanship of the state less perfectly. How? By drawing slightly less "compact" districts overall. But...

The current maps have a mix of districts that are fairly R, reasonably competitive, fairly D, and super D. The new maps reduce the number of competitive/ super-D districts at the expense of "fairly-D" ones.

Just how gerrymandered are Newsom's congressional maps? We looked at some common measures. First, partisan distribution...: 🧵

Full piece here:

... what's more, Lurie is less popular on every individual issue polled than he is overall. Suggests electorate is giving him grace to figure out knotty issues. But that probably won't last forever.

... those numbers vary strongly by political identification. While progressives and liberals are happiest about the state of the city today, progs are much more bearish on Lurie -- and the future of the city...